PL: I’m standing here with Mickey Petersen, also known as mement_mori online, at EPT Copenhagen. Mickey, you played Day 1b today how did it go?
MP: Yeah I played today, it actually went pretty well. I was just like winning all the medium pots, not really playing any big pots.
Then I lost one big one for 50k but I still bagged up 57k I think. So overall it was a pretty good day, a little above average. I just never put a lot of chips in the pots … just one of those good days I guess, everything was going my way.
PL: Could you explain to the readers what exactly you do to adjust from the normal online grind when you get to a big tournament like this?
MP: Sure. I feel like there are two things - or like two distinctive differences.
The one is that you’re playing a lot deeper than you usually are online – especially on Day 1 when you’re like 300 big blinds deep to start it off.
So like the hand rankings and stuff like that change. Like you can’t… you’re not like, online often even if you have a set or top pair, top kicker you’re just going with it where live it’s sort of a different pace.
The other thing is playing live you’re actually watching people so there’s a lot more information at your disposal. Picking up reads and betting patterns and stuff like that is a lot easier and you’re one-tabling of course instead of having like 20 tables.
You have as long as you want for making a decision, within reason, and yeah, it is a little bit different. I like it a lot.
PL: Do you feel that you are good at reading people? Do you feel like you’re just getting better or are you really good now?
MP: I feel like I’m decent at it. I feel like by some people it’s also a little overrated in the sense that you don’t look at a guy and go “Oh, he has AK…”
Well, you can, but most of the time it’s just you watch for people if they’re uncomfortable, you watch for timing tells and stuff like that, how they behave.
I feel like I’m OK at it but there’s certain people who are a lot more experienced than me.
PL: We’ve seen that you’ve dropped down the PocketFives rankings for Danish players. Is that just because you’re not playing as much online or are the other guys like Rasmus (Nielsen) playing a lot more?
MP: I feel like there’s three main reasons. One being that they’re playing more now.
Since PokerStars got tax-free everyone’s started grinding that in Denmark – which obviously has the biggest tournaments online so that’s where you can win the most points.
Second of all I have played less this year. I’ve been in the US for a bit visiting some friends and you can’t play from over there and just, you know, I definitely play less now.
I feel like the third thing is I’m only playing on Stars now and PokerStars.fr so there’s some tournaments I’m missing out on now that I used to play that all the other people are playing. So it’s hard to … the way the ranking system works you can only get I think it’s 20 scores from one site and I only have one site that qualifies instead of the five or six sites that other people have.
And also I haven’t really won anything big lately to be honest. Like I’ve had some OK scores but stumble at the finish line like every Sunday so I feel that’s the main reasons probably.
And also the other people are doing really well. I mean I got to give them credit, especially Rasmus, yeah, he’s grinding a lot.
PL: If you could rank some players, not just Danish but international, who would you rank online?
MP: It’s so hard to say on the spot. Someone like Michael Tureniec who’s here now, Scamps on Stars I think his screen name is, like he’s one of the best players in the world for sure.
He won the EPT here last year so he’s obviously good live as well. Who else … someone like Elio Fox who’s a good friend of mine, you know won the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event this year and I played a ton with him online like way before he could ever cash a live tournament.
These are just two guys that pop into my head. There’s so many good players now ... there’s definitely a very high caliber.
PL: Ok, thank you and good luck tomorrow.
MP: Thank you very much.
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